07.05.10

Summary: A roundup of one week’s news about Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office

THE reality behind Vista 7 continues to expose itself and Windows in general has grown somewhat weak, unless one judges it based on mockups. “Vista” was mentioned in last week’s news (headlines) only once, in relation to security issues. Insecurity and Windows are almost synonymous in the context of computing. New from IDG: “Death of Windows XP SP2 Support a Security Risk, Says Report”

There was not so much in the news headlines about “Windows 7″ either. Instead, Microsoft boosters started touting something which does not even exist — something which may actually harm adoption of Vista 7, according to IDG:

The Web is abuzz following the leak of an alleged Windows 8 presentation outlining Microsoft’s vision for the next iteration of the flagship desktop operating system. As media pundits speculate on the potential features and capabilities of Windows 8, the news also has the potential to make some IT administrators and business customers currently considering a migration to Windows 7 to hold off.

Let’s get back to the malarkey about “Windows 8″. Some say it’s accidental [1, 2], but it probably is not. Microsoft has already been caught faking “leaks” (pushing it voluntarily and pretending it was in error), just like Apple. It’s a marketing strategy.

Windows 7 SP1 Beta and Microsoft Security Essentials Can Fail to Play Nice Together

Major upgrades to Windows client and server platforms introduce extensive changes both on the surface and under-the-hood, down to the very core of the operating systems. It’s no wonder then, that the installation of new service packs can be prevented by programs designed with the specific purpose of safeguarding the platforms’ integrity. Early adopters deploying the Beta of the first Service Pack for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 can experience installation problems if they are running security software on their computers. According to Microsoft, the issues can affect Service Pack 1 (SP1) Beta when testers attempt to have it integrated on top of Windows 7 RTM and Windows Server 2008 R2 RTM on computers where Microsoft Security Essentials or Microsoft Forefront Client Security are already installed.

Hewlett-Packard completed its acquisition of Palm this week and gave a hint that it could be ditching Microsoft’s Windows 7 Home Premium operating system for Palm’s webOS platform in the upcoming HP Slate tablet PC.

HP has officially completed the acquisition of Palm, making it the proud owner of Palm’s coveted intellectual property including WebOS. It is hardly a surprise that before the ink was even dry on finalizing the purchase, HP announced its intent to build an array of mobile devices around the WebOS platform–including the predicted WebOS tablet.

Microsoft Nick confirms this too. HP dumps Vista 7 and moves to Linux (for this form factor at least).

The number of malicious attacks exploiting an unpatched vulnerability in older versions of Windows has mushroomed over the past week, prompting Microsoft to warn customers to deploy countermeasures until an update is released.

This workaround is not a solution and amateur users will not be able to apply the changes. “Trojan Writers Target UK Banks With Botnets,” says this new IDG report (they say “PCs” instead of “Windows PCs”)

The company identifies two pieces of malware — the previously undetected Silon.var2 and the longer-established Agent.DBJP – as the two bank Trojans being distributed by Zeus-based botnets using UK-infected PCs.

Silon.var2 now affects 1 in every 500 UK-based PCs connected to the Trusteer Flashlight system, 40 times the detection level for the US, with Agent.DBJP affecting 1 in every 5,000 UK-based PCs, again far higher than for the US.

Windows does not offer applications much protection as an underlying platform:

Applications in Windows have many privileges that enable them to mess up the entire system rather than a confined sandbox. It’s an architectural issue. Even the newly-released Office 2010 (c/f [1, 2, 3] for perspective) has security problems already (will Microsoft blame Microsoft for not bothering with “Windows defences”?)

Researchers at Vupen Security say they have uncovered a security vulnerability in Microsoft Office 2010. However, their discovery has been met with criticism from Microsoft, which complains that it has not received technical details of the bug.

As IBM acquires BigFix [1, 2] it also turns out that Microsoft Office could use some of that. According to this news, it’s buggy. Here are the details:

You’ve seen it before: That strange, cutesy “J” that occasionally appears in email and seems contextually like it’s meant to be a smiling emoticon. You may even be sending these little “J”s without even knowing it. Tech blogger Chris Pirillo explains:

[F]or some inexplicable reason [In Microsoft Office applications], some brilliant engineer thought it wise to correct “:)” as a smiley rendered in a specific font face when composing rich text documents (and/or HTML email). This is why people think you’re crazy for inserting random “J” characters in your emails — they don’t have the same fonts installed on their machine!

Bug in iOS4 Exchange ActiveSync hammers servers

[...]

Bugs in the Exchange ActiveSync (EAS) implementation in iOS4 were resulting in significant artificial loads on Exchange servers that they are connected to for push email. As outlined by the Microsoft Exchange Team blog, another symptom of the problem involves email, calendar or contact entries not synching properly.

Got to love proprietary software. Apple is just trying to step in line with Exchange/Office, which really ought to be replaced.

There are missing bits in Office 2010, Mary Jo Foley alleges (based on readers’ feedback), which maybe explains the poor reviews of Office 2010 (2/5 in Amazon). It’s just another Office 2007 with a Web extension. It’s still a resource hog that does not comply with international standards [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7].

Microsoft is misdirecting the perception of competition, sometimes with former employees. Microsoft Nick says that “Google Docs Has Microsoft a Bit Worried,” but what about Free software such as OpenOffice.org? Google Docs is proprietary. █

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The lunacy of the EPO with its patent maximalism will likely go unchecked (and uncorrected) if Battistelli gets his way and turns the EPO into another SIPO (Croatian in the human rights sense and Chinese in the quality sense)

Another long installment in a multi-part series about UPC at times of post-truth Battistelli-led EPO, which pays the media to repeat the lies and pretend that the UPC is inevitable so as to compel politicians to welcome it regardless of desirability and practicability

Implementing yet more of his terrible ideas and so-called 'reforms', Battistelli seems to be racing to the bottom of everything (patent quality, staff experience, labour rights, working conditions, access to justice etc.)

"Good for trolls" is a good way to sum up the Unitary Patent, which would give litigators plenty of business (defendants and plaintiffs, plus commissions on high claims of damages) if it ever became a reality

Microsoft's continued fascination with and participation in the effort to undermine Alice so as to make software patents, which the company uses to blackmail GNU/Linux vendors, widely acceptable and applicable again